Alchemist would be great for Flash.
I'll be sure to try to put Alchemist into Flash the instant that the client comes out! (:
Warlord Fred wrote:
I'll be sure to try to put Alchemist into Flash the instant that the client comes out! (: | |
T_T it is beautiful.
I would like to thank Byond for this. Being I know the development put in a lot of hard work. Being I am looking to use this for my projects as well. Moving the game to sites I been advertising on. I was testing what NEStalgia had so far and it just makes this so much better. I am in highest hopes this will open the door to Byond expanding to a much greater audience. | |
Oh man, this is going to be a lot of fun.
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"25% at the time of this writing"
I presume we still get double charged for when we try to transfer this money out into a paypal account. After this is taken into account, we're back to the magic 30% 'industry' charge. At least you kept it at 25% and not more, its marginally better off for low amounts than the previous $1+10%. | |
If you have a paypal business account, then you will be charged (like 3% + $0.30) by paypal on withdrawal. You can withdraw to a standard account though. The reason we made it 25% instead of 30% is to account for this, so that the merchant would always get at least 70% of sales (75% if they use a standard account). You are never double-charged as we cover the original paypal fee (so we only get roughly 20%).
In the future, I would like to move to Dwolla for withdrawals. At that point we may up the percentage cut but the end-result is the same since the merchant will be guaranteed 70% (since Dwolla has almost no fees). | |
EDIT: Yes, I got standard and I get charged.
Pretty sure I have a standard account and I still get charged for transfering from BYOND wallet to paypal account, will double check this. Also, I've been reading some of the stuff in the hub page, are we 'prevented' from offering a subscription purchase outside of the BYOND system now? I've traditionally had both internal and external, where the internal is slightly more due to the extra fees. 95+% of my business comes from my external cheaper option. | |
Acebloke wrote:
95+% of my business comes from my external cheaper option. You're missing the point. BYOND needs to make money, and developers who are serious about distributing their games need to pay for the use of the standalone client. Simple as that. | |
If you use the standalone EXE, you have to make your sales through our subscription service. Otherwise you cut us out entirely (and the standalone doesn't really help us out since it is intended to be marketed off site). Of course people are going to use your cheaper option... because it's cheaper; the point is to try to give something back to help fund this project.
We do have an alternate payment implementation that cuts out some of the fees (but we would probably just charge more to bring it back up to 70% for merchant). We tested this with SilkWizard, and although he didn't have a problem with it, I felt it was somewhat limiting (it could present problems for Flash subcriptions and didn't give us future options to take mobile and other forms of payments). But it's something that we haven't ruled out entirely. | |
At the end of the day, BYOND deserves to take a cut from developers. Anybody who releases a game on BYOND leveraged GREATLY on the programming efforts of Tom and Lummox, every project made owes some fairly high percentage of their revenues to Tom and Lummox.
I propose that you allow the flash clients and future ports to be licensed with a free key and the 25% cut of revenues model you have now, but in the future once the feature is more slick, implement a one time licensing cost to leave the BYOND sandbox. There are lots of games that are not for profit in nature, but if the enjoyment of the game maker and the game community comes largely at the expense of the efforts of the BYOND team, then some fee should be levied. I recommend easing it in, once this system is functional and effective, offer early adopters a lower fee of ~50 dollars for permanent licensing, later it can escalate to ~80/100/150 or whatever. Realistically a one time cost of 100 bucks to get your project released in the wild from BYOND and be able to add advertising or whathaveyou easily deserves a one time fee. It is entirely reasonable and the only way to make BYOND a sustainable long term project. The alternative is an annual licensing fee, but I am opposed to that as most projects have lifespans which, taper off after a few years and it wouldn't be reasonable to expect renewals of those licences. | |
I really don't like taking commissions, and hope we can get away from that model in the future. It's just that right now our pool of developers is very small and we don't really make any money off Memberships or ads, so we have to try something. Some of the games have promising potential so profit-sharing seems like a decent solution, even if it's just for the short-term. We really only make money when the developer does, so it's really more of a "tax" than anything else. In return, we provide an initial user-base, the login and subscription protocols (the latter being potentially lucrative as we support different forms of payments), and, of course, the development tools.
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I feel that is very generous of you Tom, you could squeeze a lot more out of developers but you are being cautious to not scare the few developers you have away. I hope to see the developer community here explode following BYOND 500, I earnestly wish you the best of luck as I think some major monetization is a long time coming.
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Wow, this is absolutely awesome.
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Silk Games wrote:
Acebloke wrote: Actually, I was trying to ask whether I'll _need_ to migrate them over to BYOND. Obviously I'm going to promote the option that gets me the most money. If BYOND is taking a stand and saying we _have_ to only use BYOND's internal system then I'll make that shift, I was not necessarily being resistive against it. Please don't assume just because you get special treatment with your BYOND projects that the rest of us who ask honest questions are against BYOND making money. "If you use the standalone EXE, you have to make your sales through our subscription service." This is fine, and clear. | |
Acebloke wrote:
Actually, I was trying to ask whether I'll _need_ to migrate them over to BYOND. Right. As I said, you missed the point :P Acebloke wrote: just because you get special treatment with your BYOND projects I'm motivated and I work hard. I'm one of the few developers here who is actually vying for large-scale distribution of my work. Only a person looking to blame others for their own lack of productivity would use the term "special treatment" in reference to my role on BYOND. | |
For the record, we're working with Silk because he has shown an interest in getting his game out into the real world. He's been very helpful in making suggestions as to the kinds of things he, as an independent game developer, needs to present a more professional image for his BYOND game. We're more than happy to work with anyone who shares this common goal.
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lovely idea
i know dmb2exe gives everybody a choice but this is progress | |
In my opinion, requesting the attention of the BYOND owners to implement or test new features with a large scale BYOND project is entirely reasonable and not a good reason to show animosity. I do not believe that Silk gets special attention for any reason other than he has reasonable requests of the BYOND staff for accomplishing a goal and Tom and Lummox have always been very helpful towards developers here.
On that note though, I appreciate what you are saying Tom, I may take you up on that. | |
isnt byond going to shut down so on thats what i was hearing i want it to stay on
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and good work on the updates
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Sorry, the only terms that came to mind as I was writing my reply in a hurry. Either way, I'm excited to beta test things quicker. :)